With the World Series and baseball ads plus Halloween this weekend, I’m doubling up on ads so I can highlight both baseball and Halloween-themed ones. Today’s baseball ad is from the 1970s for Pabst. The “Cool Blue” Pabst baseball player is running to make the catch … of a mug of beer.
Our 41st Guinness poster by John Gilroy features the largest, most twisted tuba ever made, whose playing is undoubtedly made possible by Guinness. That’s what gave him “Guinness for Strength” to be able to play such a big tuba.
With the World Series and baseball ads plus Halloween this weekend, I’m doubling up on beer ads so I can also highlight a few Halloween-themed ones. The first of these is a Budweiser ad from 1953 featuring a truly scary mask and a witch holding up a glass of beer to toast a jack-o-lantern along with the tagline “When you know your beer … it’s bound to be Bud.
Friday’s beer and baseball ad is the ninth one featured going into the World Series. The ad is from 1951 and is for Schlitz. It features two players — or perhaps managers? — arguing about something while the ump keeps on smiling, as he pours himself a bottle of Schlitz.
I’m not quite sure what to think about this. The Publican reported today that the highly respected and nearly 30-year old UK Good Pub Guide is going to begin charging pubs to be included in the guide. Starting with next year’s edition, fees to be included “will be either £99 or £199, depending on the size of the outlet.” The current issue includes over 5,000 listings, so that would mean future books would realize between £500,000 and £1,000,000 (or between $800,900 and $1.6 million dollars).
The reason for the charge is explained by editor Fiona Stapley, and it’s just what you’d expect. “Putting together a guide like this is quite expensive and we are looking at the business model. More and more guides like this are charging. She added that the judging criteria would remain the same and pubs would still have to reach the same standards to gain a listing.”
And yes, I’m sure that it is expensive to put the book together. Having been involved in publishing for a lot of years, I don’t doubt that it’s become increasingly pricey to produce the book. Unfortunately, I’m not sure this is necessarily the best fix. As Stapley states, “more and more guides like this are charging.” Maybe, but I have a hard time believing by doing so they maintain the same level of integrity and independence. The most obvious problem would come when some, or perhaps a lot, of pubs choose not to spend the money. After all, a lot of pubs in the UK are struggling to stay afloat. As a result, the “Good Pub Guide” could become the “Good Pubs Willing to Pay the Fee Guide.” It would no longer be complete. Undoubtedly, many successful pubs would feel compelled to pay in order to not have their business suffer from being excluded. Whenever that happens — and however perfectly legal — it would still be hard not to see it as de facto extortion.
Could they charge pubs to be included and then remain independent in their reviews? I’m sure it’s possible. After all, magazines that accept advertising do it all the time. But this seems slightly different insofar as this is paying to be in a guidebook whose sole purpose it to provide impartial reviews of each pub’s quality and worthiness. Even if they started out with the best of intentions, it seems very likely, to me at least, that over time the pubs that are paying would come to expect something in return for their continued support and the dynamic of the publication would change. And increasingly, pubs that should be recommended would come to not be included just because they balked at the idea of paying for the privilege. That would do a grave disservice to both those good pubs and the potential customers using the guidebook to find them. No matter how hard they tried to remain impartial, it just feels like it would still create an undesirable perception of the potential for misconduct. What do you think? Inevitable and unconcerning or a death blow to impartiality?
Thursday’s beer and baseball ad is the eighth one featured going into the World Series. The ad is from 1968 and is for Narragansett Beer. The spokeswoman is wearing a Boston Red Sox cap and urging customer to “Go For Two!” Just like the San Francisco Giants tonight.
I just heard that the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) earlier today voted unanimously “to require organic beer to include 100% organic hops beginning January 1, 2013.” If you haven’t been following this, under current USDA guidelines, a beer can be labeled “organic” if 95% of its ingredients are organic. Since less than 5% of beer consists of hops, that means almost any beer using organic malt may be called an organic beer. If a brewery uses 100% organic ingredients, they may label that beer “100% organic,” but all but the most savvy consumers are unaware of the difference. And it’s hard to argue that the current standard doesn’t cause confusion. I think most people who see a product labeled “organic” are going to assume that it’s all organic, not just mostly organic. There are actually four ways that beer can be labeled “organic” which includes the two I just mentioned plus “Made with Organic Ingredients” and “Some Organic Ingredients.” You can see the different standards at a post I did several Years ago, What Makes Beer Organic? The last two seem to convey the intended information, and so does saying “100%.” It’s that simple “organic” designation being only 95% that has people concerned — rightly so, I should add — and led the American Organic Hop Grower Association (AOHGA) to petition the USDA to “remove hops from the National List of non-organic ingredients allowed in organic food (section 205.606).” You can view the petition, and an addendum, at the AOGHA website.
Here’s some of the background, from an AOGHA press release:
Hops were first added to the National List by the NOSB in June 2007, when organic hops were primarily produced in Europe and New Zealand. Since then, the U.S. organic hop industry has made significant advances. Progressive, large-scale family farms in the Pacific Northwest and small, local growers across the country are now growing organic hops, even though the hop producers believe the market for them has remained weak due to the current NOSB policy which allows brewers to use less expensive, non-organic hops in their beer labeled organic.
In an attempt to remove hops from the National List, the American Organic Hop Grower Association (AOHGA) submitted a petition to the USDA in December 2009, supported by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, Anheuser-Busch, Lakefront Brewery, Seven Bridges Cooperative, and Hopunion LLC.
When the USDA denied the petition, BT Loftus Ranches VP Patrick Smith wrote an impassioned essay, National Organic Standards Board to US Organic Hop Industry: “Drop Dead”, that nicely laid out the organic hop farmers’ case. In the middle of October, “thanks to his efforts, and the attendant “response from consumers, organic hop growers, and organic brewers, the NOSB Handling Committee has revised their previous recommendation and is now recommending that hops come off the National List on January 1, 2013.” Good news, to be sure, but it still required the full board of NOSB board vote on the petition again and accept the changed recommendation at a meeting in Madison today, as reported by Patrick Smith in an Organic Hops Update.
The AOHGA website is now updated with the following: “On October 28, 2010, the National Organic Standards Board unanimously voted in favor of the removal of hops from section 205.606 of the National List of Approved and Prohibited Substances, effective January 1, 2013.”
Wednesday’s beer and baseball ad is the seventh one featured going into the World Series. The ad is our second for Falstaff and appropriately mentions the seventh inning stretch. The ad is from 1963 and starts out with “For your Light-hearted moments … This is the One.” I can’t tell if the ad is photographed or a hyper-realistic illustration. The pair just look so perfect that it’s hard to tell. The veins in his arms, the impish smirk, the perfect hair. Then there’s the woman behind him, throwing off her catcher’s mitt with tousled hair and a perfect come hither smile. The guy actually looks a little bit like a very young Ed O’Neil, the Dad on “Married with Children” and now on “Modern Family.” The text at the bottom begins “Seventh inning! Stretch for a Falstaff!”
This Halloween, a new law in the state of Michigan takes effect. Officially, it’s known as the “High Blood Alcohol Content Enhanced Penalty” law, though most people call it by its nickname: the “Super Drunk” law. Essentially, the new law targets persons driving with a BAC of 0.17 or above and carries harsher penalties than regular drunk driving, to wit:
Under the new law, drunk drivers with a level of .17 or higher will face harsher punishment. Jail time will be doubled, a drivers license will be revoked for a minimum 45 days. Drivers who register .17 or higher will also face mandatory alcohol treatment and costs that could reach as high as $10,000.
According to Michigan ABC television station WJRT Channel 12, the “National Highway Traffic Safety is behind [the new law]. More than 40 states already passed the law and Michigan is one of them.” Strange that I haven’t heard of this before, especially if all but ten states have a similar law on the books. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, not including Michigan, indeed 42 states have increased penalties for drivers stopped with a BAC of between 0.15 and 0.20, depending on the state.
So I know what you’re probably thinking. “How could I possibly be against this?” Well, the truth is I’m actually not … not exactly, anyway. I’m not necessarily against having harsher penalties for different levels of intoxicated driving. My biggest problem with this law, and presumably it’s the same in the other states, is that while addressing the upper limit, it keeps the lower limit where it is, at 0.08, and also there continues to be “zero tolerance” areas that ignore the law and arrest people who are below 0.08 and also some jurisdictions that either have proposed or have already passed legislation allowing the arrest of people with a lower BAC. I’m just not sure any of this does much to actually stop people from driving drunk — the goal, one hopes — and it especially does nothing to stop the worst offenders. At least one Michigan newspaper agrees with me, writing In The Margins: ‘Super drunk’ law isn’t necessary, nor will it curb hard-core drunks.
To me the problem of the worst offenders driving drunk was never addressed by lowering the BAC. All that’s been accomplished is ruining the lives of more and more people. The argument is always, but what about the people who are hurt by drunk drivers? In a sense, that’s like asking “what about the people who might be accidentally shot during a robbery.” Making robbery illegal hasn’t stopped that problem, either, because people who will do stupid and illegal things will not stop just because the government says “hey you, stop.” Of course it would be great if everybody was responsible and didn’t get behind the wheel of their car when they’d had too much, but more and harsher penalties hasn’t worked before. Maybe it’s time to try a different approach?
Tuesday we feature the sixth baseball-themed add, which will continue through the World Series. The ad is for Falstaff and the Chicago White Sox. It’s most likely from 1971-75, because as far as I can tell those are the only years that the Sox used red and white in the way its shown in the ad. The theme of the ad is “Double Play …” with the twin pleasures of beer and baseball.
